The lack of progress in market share is a fact. If you don't like "stagnation", would you prefer "loss of momentum"?

What description do you prefer if neither of these are to your liking? I would hesitate to say that iPhone popularity has peaked, because it is hard to draw reliable trends from snapshots. However, if they don't do something about the iOS problem prior to the third quarter, a trend may be identifiable.

So how would you characterize the lack of market growth shown by the graph?

How about because it's the winter and nobody in their right mind would by a new iphone and lock themselves in for 2 years when it'll be out of date in 3 or 4 months?

I highly doubt that if there is multi-tasking, it will be true multi-tasking. (Then again, one could argue there is multi-tasking in the current iPhone OS, able to play music in the background, receive notifications in the background, etc... even that most coveted "Talk and Surf" feature. :P)

Anyhow, my guess is that they will suspend programs that are not on the screen, except for any notifications or messages. There may be the possibility of having a small interactive part with the notification system, but that would be the extent of it. Essentially, they would suspend a program so you can use something else, then come back to it when you want and pick up where you left off. We all know the iPhone OS won't have multiple windows open on the screen at once (I doubt it ever would since any handheld device's screen is so small) so something like this would be perfect and give the sense that we are multi-tasking. Even if this were the case, that would still be a HUGE step forward for so many people! (Some programs currently remember the last state you were in and when launched, go back to that state.)

Yup, I think this is mostly what it will be. They might also figure out some solutions to very specific problems, like playing Pandora in the background. But I very much doubt we will see full blown 3rd party app multitasking. I just can't see, for example, putting Monopoly in the background as a running task. It just makes no sense from a performance/battery perspective to allow that, especially since that would provide zero benefit to the user (assuming rapid task switching becomes possible).

To pull this off well, Apple will need to address several obstacles that led them to limit multitasking in the first place. I think to really pull it off elegantly new hardware will need to be part of the solution:

- UI: I like the idea of a touch initiated Expose-like feature. The user will need to have an easy way to not only switch between running apps but also to kill unneeded ones. An 854x480 screen (or 1024x768 on the iPad) will also make it much easier to add some room for some new main screen UI element as another option. Maybe a mini dock? The push notification UI will need to be rethought as well.

- Battery life: Multiple background apps will obviously impact battery life. A new more efficient CPU/GPU will help with this. Also I would expect that background apps will have some specific guidelines about sleeping until/unless certain limited callback functions are called.

Once again, the article paints jailbreakers as Malware victims and pirates. Jailbreaking for me has provided functionality that is significant and blatantly missing from the stock OS. Ad blocking, time based silent mode, a lock screen that is useful, better navigation tools and app backgrounding (freeze drying, not really multi-tasking). It's all good stuff and is sorely overdue.

I also have a unique SMS notification sound. How many of you in a crowded place think you've got an SMS only to find out someone near you did, and you are still so very alone?

Because of my experience with 'Push' notification on a few iPhone apps, I don't really know if this is a good thing. Push cuts my battery life by about 1/3.
I hope that apps have to be 'certified' to use background services, that is meet certain performance and impact benchmarks to be able to be sold on the App Store.

You should turn off your push notifications then. I'd assume your concerns are one reason for the late release of multitasking on the iphone OS and it's got me thinking that it's a feature more for the Ipad than the Iphone. MT isn't really benefit on a phone, but would be almost essential on a device like an ipad. Apple will surely get it right and make it easy to control.

Apple likes fixing things other designers screw up and managing multi tasking is one place where others have screwed up, with their short term thinking, but it's where Apple will shine. Applications are more essential to the Iphone OS and devices than they ever will be for droid or blackberry. There's little disputing that they are not app-centric devices.Multitasking is a very important feature for Apple to get right and it's not so important for RIM or Google because they can't so easily back themselves into a wall with users that want 50-100 Apps on their device. Apple customers will.

turtles all the way up and turtles all the way down... infinite context means infinite possibility

The lack of progress in market share is a fact. If you don't like "stagnation", would you prefer "loss of momentum"?

What description do you prefer if neither of these are to your liking? I would hesitate to say that iPhone popularity has peaked, because it is hard to draw reliable trends from snapshots. However, if they don't do something about the iOS problem prior to the third quarter, a trend may be identifiable.

So how would you characterize the lack of market growth shown by the graph?

Since you seem to be looking for some sort of definitive answer, I'll give it a shot; the unwillingness of many to switch carriers/market saturation of iPhones, in conjunction with the lock-in RIM has with the business world, has lead to a "plateau" in the sales of the iPhone, until there is a product refresh. Then, there might be a slight surge in iPhone marketshare, in relation to RIM. The Android has "surged" ahead, because it's not hard to "surge" ahead from 0 to 7, especially when Android is gobbling up the scraps of Palm and WinMo. I predict palm to be effectively dead in a year, Android and the iPhone battling for second place, and Windows Phone 7 Ultimate Extreme Plus! Edition SP12 to be the somewhat unknown variable at the end of the year.

Complete shot in the dark on my part, don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but it all seems plausible enough to me.

With the market share they have and their capitalization value approaching MS, I'd say Apple's "huge mistakes" have paid off pretty well. I don't find their iOS technically inferior. I find it a pleasure to write for, as I expect the iPad will, sharing a common IDE and OS.

In that case, to what do you attribute the stagnation in iOS market share? Others here predict that Apple might regain its lost momentum in the third quarter, when they release a new OS. But you don't think that will do it for them?

In that case, to what do you attribute the stagnation in iOS market share? Others here predict that Apple might regain its lost momentum in the third quarter, when they release a new OS. But you don't think that will do it for them?

Apple will also need to rethink the interface/usability of switching between multiple running apps. Hitting the home button each time, will get old very quickly (as it does now...).

I couldn't agree more. Its hard to believe but one of the best things about giving up my iPhone for a work BB, was no more app switching up and down via the home down. It used to really grate me as I used so many apps that my phone felt like a yo-yo.

Blackberrys are widely used by businesses as company phones for their employees.

I work for a global chemical company. If you need a company phone, it is a Blackberry...there are no exceptions. Many of my colleagues in the industry are in the same situation.

Exactly. I work on a military installation. New officers arriving on station, depending on rank, are issued a Blackberry when they in-process. Certain environments simply aren't as adaptable or willing to accept a device like the iPhone. And with the majority of those that I know with a Blackberry, they'd part with it when it was pried from their cold, dead hands.

To pull this off well, Apple will need to address several obstacles that led them to limit multitasking in the first place. I think to really pull it off elegantly new hardware will need to be part of the solution:

- UI: I like the idea of a touch initiated Expose-like feature. The user will need to have an easy way to not only switch between running apps but also to kill unneeded ones. An 854x480 screen (or 1024x768 on the iPad) will also make it much easier to add some room for some new main screen UI element as another option. Maybe a mini dock? The push notification UI will need to be rethought as well.

- Battery life: Multiple background apps will obviously impact battery life. A new more efficient CPU/GPU will help with this. Also I would expect that background apps will have some specific guidelines about sleeping until/unless certain limited callback functions are called.

I can think of so many useful ideas for this - location updating is just one.

Wow. You seem to think that they will have to scrap the current hardware just to multitask? I disagree. The current hardware does just fine multitaking. It is a software issue; the iPhone hardware is great.

Since you seem to be looking for some sort of definitive answer, I'll give it a shot; the unwillingness of many to switch carriers/market saturation of iPhones, in conjunction with the lock-in RIM has with the business world, has lead to a "plateau" in the sales of the iPhone, until there is a product refresh. Then, there might be a slight surge in iPhone marketshare, in relation to RIM. The Android has "surged" ahead, because it's not hard to "surge" ahead from 0 to 7, especially when Android is gobbling up the scraps of Palm and WinMo. I predict palm to be effectively dead in a year, Android and the iPhone battling for second place, and Windows Phone 7 Ultimate Extreme Plus! Edition SP12 to be the somewhat unknown variable at the end of the year.

Complete shot in the dark on my part, don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but it all seems plausible enough to me.

Interesting ideas. And I agree that the lack of progress is likely a plateau instead of a peak. But that's just a guess.

I agree that the one-phone strategy is deficient. Do you think that if Apple introduced a line of phone products, the stagnation would reverse?

But that's the exact reason why that chart is missleading....It captures the sales of the newly released Droid and the Nexus One.... The iPhone was already 6 months old....of course sales are going to level off....

That's exactly what I LOVE about the iPhone...I bought the 3GS weeks after it was released, and I made the purchase, knowing that for a full year I'd have the very best Apple had to offer..... I really feel bad for the Android users....all those kids that got pulled into the ass kicking Droid ads.... Being told that was the best thing in the world and then less than two months later The Nexus One blows it out of the water....and no Android fan boys have explaind this to me yet, but why doesn't Google release the latest software to Droid users??? I would be out of my mind if I dropped my cash on that and was denied the latest features from Google.

Wow. You seem to think that they will have to scrap the current hardware just to multitask? I disagree. The current hardware does just fine multitaking. It is a software issue; the iPhone hardware is great.

No they don't have to, but I think they will roll it out with new hardware. More resolution and better (lower) power consumption will make the transition much more compelling. Apple is still a hardware company first.

# a state of inactivity (in business or art etc); "economic growth of less than 1% per year is considered to be economic stagnation"
# inactivity of liquids; being stagnant; standing still; without current or circulationwordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Yeah - that's pretty much what I thought stagnation meant.

Do you disagree with this dictionary definition? Is there a better way to describe the "standing still" of iOS market share? The example that they gave of 'economic growth of less than 1%" seems exactly analogous to the current state of the iPhone. Where have I gone wrong?

Because of my experience with 'Push' notification on a few iPhone apps, I don't really know if this is a good thing. Push cuts my battery life by about 1/3. I wouldn't mind if certain apps (chat, pandora, etc) had the ability to run in the background, but I'm afraid that every hack programmer in the world is going to layer on mostly needless background updating and kill my battery life. Weather apps that constantly feel the need to update in the background, stock tickers that continue to tick in the background, social networking that continue to pull status updates (and chat requests and email updates) without concern for platform performance or battery life.

I hope that apps have to be 'certified' to use background services, that is meet certain performance and impact benchmarks to be able to be sold on the App Store.

i totally agree. android apps multitasking sucks the battery down big time. apple had good reason to not multitask. it certainly wasn't due to inability to implement from 'know how'.

This will come in the form of Dashboard, with a finite number of "sockets" (four?) in which you can place widgets (which can be bundled with apps themselves) that you want to have running all the time. The widgets will contain only the necessary pieces of code to run in the background; for example, Pandora's widget might only contain the streaming, next/pause and album artwork pieces, not all the UI for playlist navigation, etc. I don't think they're going to let you run graphics-intensive video games, "unmanned", as that would be a waste of resource. They're going to sandbox it and force efficiency by requiring developers to write separate background-able apps this way, possibly with some limitation on cpu / ram usage.

Widgets will be visible from the lock screen and can also be brought up by holding the home button (which will become a toggle-able action like holding the home screen button, so you have to choose between that and the voice command thing).

They'll unveil their own widgets for calendar, mail, etc... and even voice command (to keep it accessible, if it's something you use).

Do you really think that folks currently buying iPhones are not in their right minds? I would disagree. The hardware is great, and the software will be better soon.

So you think that the loss of momentum is due primarily to Apple's slow progress made in catching up with the competition? That may be correct; I don't know.

Nooooo...

I think it's because they've released three phones now in the June/ July time frame. Sales jump when the phone is released and then start to peter out. It has nothing to do with slow progress "catching up" as I don't think they need to catch up with anything. It's just the period nature of how the iphone market works and to look at anything but a year over year graph is misleading

I'm pretty sure that if Apple is going to do multitasking that it will mean GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) is coming to iPhone OS 4.0. Not really surprising, but awesome. That also means that background processes are not going to work like typical background process. For example, they may not be able to talk to certain threads like the display thread. Everything would be scheduled so that the operating system can wake up the processor and perform all background processes simultaneously to conserve power (the way it works in Snow Leopard). By doing background processes with GCD, Apple can and will enforce limitations on what developers can do with it. That is a good thing for the stability of the system by the way. This also means closures (a new C/C++/Obj-C feature required by GCD) are finally coming to the iPhone!

Yet another troll from iGenius. And after multitasking is implemented you will be complaing about how slow the iPhone is and how battery life sucks because of it. It never ends does it?

And as for Android? Har, har, har. Take a look at the next article on AppleInsider. Smarthpone sales grew 37% while Apple's iPhone sales grew 98%. Wow, how stagnatingly stalled is that!

But I suppose trolls will be trolls.

Oh, and I hope you are once again offended by the truth.

I don't ever notice a decrease in performance or battery life when I leave programs open on my TP2.

I think this is a myth perpetuated by the higher-ups at Apple to keep people like you accepting of the fact that the iphone hasn't had multitasking (until now.)

Think about it. All this time Steve Jobs has said how the iphone doesn't need multitasking and cited the same reasons as you repeat here, but now they're adding it? It's just more of the same: Jobs says something that flies in the face of what people want, then people convince themselves they don't want it anymore. The same thing goes with flash.

...and yet another thread ruined by Trolls-Я-Us. Way to go iGenius, I'm sure you'll get a pay bonus from your employer for today's work.

Yep.. an article about multitasking suddenly shifted to how the iPhone growth is stagnating, which is not true.

Now back to the main topic. In the last two years, the iPhones x.0 beta were released in March. It strange that we still don't know if we will see a beta release this month or not, which in my opinion is caused by the iPad release. I am interested in seeing how Apple will implement multitasking it they do. I've always thought that the best way for them to do so is to require special approval for apps that require this feature. In other words, if a developer want to have his app to have the ability to run in the back ground then he/she will have to comply with specific set of rules and maybe a special APIs.

Exactly. I work on a military installation. New officers arriving on station, depending on rank, are issued a Blackberry when they in-process. Certain environments simply aren't as adaptable or willing to accept a device like the iPhone. And with the majority of those that I know with a Blackberry, they'd part with it when it was pried from their cold, dead hands.

yes, it is sorta like the IBM pc. it sold so well cuz businesses thought 'ibm. safe. trustworthy. cheaper' and bought them by boatloads.

apple doesn't focus on enterprise much. i have used blackberrys for 4 years if i remember correctly. i just retired my bold and have no desire to go back to blackberrys. but honestly if i had to say what is probably the most secure mobile device when properly setup i would say blackberrys along with a corporate BES.

Yea and just like copy n paste once 3rd party multitasking is implemented, guaranteed it will the best implementation and surpassing the palm pre's cards-style multitasking. People will once again say how apple implements UI the best. All will be right in the world, and the haters will just come up with another line of attack...

it's aight apple, shake them haters off...all they can do is create a subpar experience as usual...

All this talk of facts and stagnation is giving me a headache. Let me offer this. When you look at a graph of the growth of anything starting from its origin you will see that it's usually not a straight incline. It is jagged--showing dips and recoveries, but with the overall long term trend being upward. When you look at a any defined segment of the total graph, such as a quarterly period, it may well show a flat line or a downward trend. Looking only at this you would be correct in saying that growth is stagnating. It's only a "fact" in that it's correct data. When you pull back from this myopic view to look at the entire growth chart, you may well see that it's only a small part of an overall upward trend, with many other similar hiccups in the past. That is also a fact. The question is, which of these facts best represents the truth of the situation? Getting too granular in your examination of trends leads to false assumptions.

As long as there is a setting where the user can configure this, Apple will be able to hold onto their claims for talk time and standby time. I'm guessing something like selecting which applications can multitask with most or all of them turned off by default.

A friend wants this just for Pandora in the worst way, and I can see her point (though I listen to music on my iPhone via the iPod interface which already multitasks).

I don't ever notice a decrease in performance or battery life when I leave programs open on my TP2.

I think this is a myth perpetuated by the higher-ups at Apple to keep people like you accepting of the fact that the iphone hasn't had multitasking (until now.)

Think about it. All this time Steve Jobs has said how the iphone doesn't need multitasking and cited the same reasons as you repeat here, but now they're adding it? It's just more of the same: Jobs says something that flies in the face of what people want, then people convince themselves they don't want it anymore. The same thing goes with flash.

You're not thinking it through.

Running more programs use more RAM and use more CPU cycles. This slows down the performance and uses more of the battery. These are facts.

Jobs said multitasking will come to the iPhone but adding the unintelligent, all-you-eat solution of Android and WebOS is foolish. Just like with copy/paste, adding a half-assed solution is not a wise move for an advanced smartphone platform. Just look at the poor solutions on the Android and WebOS.

Their won't be 3rd-party apps for killing overly hungry processes or restarting the phone in the middle of the night to deal with memory leaks. Do if right or don't do it at all, but don't do a shit job just to put it on a spec sheet. In other words, it'll have to be user friendly and intuitive.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"